Growing Boys

Despite our directions to not let the boys get any older while we were Ireland Bill and Maureen let them grow up.  Julian has begun to crawl on his knees, eat everything in site and push things around the house.  Niko has added two words to every sentence.   It has been a total surprise to get back and hear how articulate he has become in just one week.  
This is from a few weeks ago, Niko poured a bowl of cheerios on the ground and Julian pounced on them.  Being the good parents that we are we let them eat them off the floor.
Niko is getting taller, even without the heels.  Sarah had to go buy him (and Julian) new clothes for summer.

Walking in Howth

"We are walking where John?"
"Just around the bend there...
And past the huge rock in the ocean...
and past the cliffs...
and then we'll rest a little and go back."

St. Paddy's Day in Dublin

We picked this pub as our base of operations for the parade 
The streets got packed, this went on for about 2 and 1/2 miles, there were about 650,000 people there.  A lot of people come from all over the world for the parade, one Irishman told us in Galway that "there won't be a lot of Irish there."
Here is one of the floats.  The parade is very international with entries from all over the world.
John and Sarah 
Me and Sarah taking a break from the Parade,  we lucked out and snared some seats near the front window of the pub.

The Aran Islands

Here is a look directly over the cliff, can't take credit for this, those are Heather's feet.
Sarah by the cliff.

There was an old fort that backed up to this cliff.  There wasn't a fence or railing or anything. You could hang your feet off the side or look straight over the side.  I did neither.
Sarah, Me, Mike and Heather on one of the "beaches" on the Aran Islands
Here is a close up of the rock walls
the Aran Islands and a lot of eastern Ireland are covered in these rock walls, no mortor or nothing, they are just stacked one on top of the other